luckadjusted
NHL Week 6 · 2026-27

2026-27 regular season · November 4, 2026

No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.

Senators at Sabres, Nov 4, 2026: who deserved to win?

The Senators beat the Sabres 2–1, and the replays lean their way: with the same day's form, they win 6 of 10.

The game turned on a luck play (P3, 8:27 left): Shane Pinto scored on a backhand shot from 9 feet, worth 30 points of win probability to the Senators. The biggest single swing (P3, 3:09 left): Michael Amadio scored on a snap shot from 18 feet.

Final

Ottawa Senators 2
Buffalo Sabres 1

November 4, 2026 · KeyBank Center

Our prediction before puck drop: even

Luck index +37 Senators lucky · −37 Sabres

Each team’s own shots from this game, resampled into new games 4,000 times, each a goal at its chance, with the power plays the penalties gave and the pulled goalie at the end: with the way both teams actually played, how often does this performance win? How the replay works

Ten replays. Senators win 6, Sabres win 4.

  1. 1 OTT 7 BUF 2
  2. 2 OTT 3 BUF 0
  3. 3 OTT 3 BUF 0
  4. 4 OTT 5 BUF 3
  5. 5 OTT 2 BUF 1
  6. 6 OTT 5 BUF 4
  7. 7 OTT 4 BUF 5
  8. 8 OTT 3 BUF 4
  9. 9 OTT 3 BUF 5
  10. 10 OTT 4 BUF 7

Our prediction before puck drop

We had it even, a coin flip. The Senators won by 1. The final margin was 1.0 goal from ours; 59% of games like this end further from the forecast than that.

Show as a table
OutcomeChance
Senators win49.5%
Sabres win50.5%
Middle 50%: Senators by 2 to Sabres by 250%
Middle 90%: Senators by 4 to Sabres by 490%
Middle 95%: Senators by 5 to Sabres by 595%
Exactly Sabres by 120.9%
Exactly Senators by 120.3%
Exactly Sabres by 311.8%
Exactly Senators by 311.4%
Exactly Senators by 210.1%

Most of the distance between a forecast and a final score is luck: a hot goalie, a post or a deflection moves a hockey score more than anything known before the game. Made Wed, Nov 4, 1:20 pm ET and frozen at puck drop. How our predictions have done

Three other ways to ask

Each answers a different question, so none of them replaces the replay above.

No closing line for this game.

Needs the closing line, which this game has not got.

Every shot redrawn at its chance, overtime and the shootout replayed as near coin flips; the shots themselves and every call fixed. The narrowest view of luck.

How 4,000.1 replays ended

Senators win 63% of them, Sabres 37%. The line is what actually happened: Senators by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Senators by 3+30.3%
Senators by 212.1%
Senators by 120.5%
Sabres by 119.6%
Sabres by 27.9%
Sabres by 3+9.6%

Where the luck was

What the luck was worth

Every lucky and unlucky play, weighted by the moment it happened: its swing in win probability, added up by kind. A post hit in a blowout counts for nothing; the same post with a minute left in a tie game can be most of a win.

Swings add up across a game, so in one that went back and forth they can pass 100%. On the scoreboard the same luck was worth +0.1 goals to the Sabres: the final margin was Senators by 1, without the luck Senators by 1.1. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Senators4423.28−1.28
Sabres3312.16−1.16

Regulation with both goalies in. Expected goals: our model of each shot’s chance from where and how it was taken (distance, angle, shot type, rebound, rush, strength), adjusted for the shooter’s and the goalie’s records. A team above expected finished better or met a weaker night in goal; 75% of the gap counts as luck (why that share).

Calls

Every penalty that put a team on the power play, and every goal taken off the board on review, with what it did to the helped team’s chance of winning at that moment. Calls don’t count toward luck by default: who draws penalties repeats from game to game like a skill (how calls are valued). Switch them on below.

WhenCallWin probability for
P2 13:56 Holding on the Sabres (Rasmus Dahlin): 2 minutes on the power play +5% OTT
P2 3:35 Holding on the Sabres (Owen Power): 2 minutes on the power play +4% OTT
P3 18:13 Interference on the Senators (Nikolas Matinpalo): 2 minutes on the power play +5% BUF
P3 11:21 Boarding on the Senators (Jordan Spence): 2 minutes on the power play +5% BUF

When it happened

Sabres’ chance of winning

As low as 0% and as high as 85%. Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.

Our in-game win probability: the score and the time left, starting from the betting line (or the home edge alone when there is none), with goals at the league’s rates for the score. Overtime is drawn at a fixed width. Shaded above the middle while the Sabres were ahead in it, below while the Senators were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P2 6:00 Peyton Krebs scored on a deflected shot from 10 feetShooting · 10% chance +20% BUF –
2 P2 2:38 Drake Batherson’s snap shot from 23 feet was savedShooting · 23% chance +5% BUF –
3 P2 2:03 Claude Giroux missed the net with a tip from 5 feetShooting · 20% chance +5% BUF –
4 P3 11:21 Boarding on the Senators (Jordan Spence): 2 minutes on the power playPenalty calls +5% BUF –
5 P3 8:39 Stephen Halliday missed the net with a deflected shot from 5 feetShooting · 16% chance +5% BUF –
6 P3 8:29 Philip Tomasino’s snap shot from 14 feet was savedShooting · 18% chance +6% BUF –
7 P3 8:27 The game turned hereShane Pinto scored on a backhand shot from 9 feetShooting · 11% chance +30% OTT –
8 P3 3:09 Michael Amadio scored on a snap shot from 18 feetShooting · 10% chance +37% OTT –

Adjust the assumptions

Think finishing is more skill than we do, or that the calls were luck? Change it and the coin-flip replay reruns in your browser.

Only coin-flips re-rolled

Senators 69% · Sabres 31%

Final margin
Senators by 1
Luck in goals
0.1 for the Sabres
Luck-adjusted margin
Senators by 1.1
Replay with same day's form
Senators 63% · Sabres 37% unchanged: why
How much of each is luck?

0% treats it as skill, 100% as pure luck. The tick is our fit.

What counts
Flip a play

Force the other outcome, in this game and in every replay: a goal becomes a save, a post goes in, a penalty goes the other way.

About these numbers

Play-by-play from the NHL via fastRhockey; expected goals, in-game win probability and the replays are our own models, fitted on every game since 2018-19 (methodology and validation). Blocked shots aren’t replayed (their location is the block’s, not the shot’s). No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.

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